The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine had not sustained any critical damage in the attack, Andrii Tuz, a spokesman for the plant, told CNN on Friday, adding that when firefighters initially arrived they were blocked by Russian troops.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Ukraine’s regulator had told the organization there had been no change in reported radiation levels and that the fire had had not affected “essential” equipment. The White House said it was monitoring the situation.
Attention has focused on the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power facilities as Russia’s invasion of the country intensifies. The prospect of the fire causing damage at the nuclear plant has alarmed experts, though they cautioned that it was too early to gauge the full impact.
Graham Allison, Professor at Belfer Center, Harvard University told Anderson Cooper early Friday that “facts are unfolding” but “not all fires in a power plant, have catastrophic consequences.”
Ukrainian officials called on Russian troops to cease fighting after reports the plant has been attacked first emerged Friday morning local time
A large number of Russian tanks and infantry “broke through the block-post” to the town of Enerhodar, a few kilometers from the Zaporizhzhia power plant, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said, according to a statement from the watchdog.
The agency was closely monitoring the situation, and Grossi spoke with Ukraine’s Prime Minister and the country’s nuclear regulator about the fire, the IAEA said on Twitter early Friday.
Matthew Bunn, a James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School on the Ukraine Nuclear Plant told CNN “It’s not by any means the worst-case scenario. Right now, the main dangers to the Ukrainian people are bullets, bombs, and shells, not radiation.”
The Zaporizhzhia plant contains six of the country’s 15 nuclear energy reactors, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA said the agency was in “constant contact” with Ukrainian counterparts to ensure the safety of facilities in Ukraine.
“What makes it unprecedented is this is the first time in post-second world war history we have a full-fledged military operation amidst…a big number of nuclear facilities, including nuclear reactors,” said Grossi.
“There is always the danger of military activity that could affect the sites or that there might be some interruption or some disruption in the normal operation of any of these facilities that may result in a problem or an accident,” he said.
Zaporizhzhia is located about 125 miles (200 kilometers) west of the city of Donetsk within one of the two pro-Moscow territories recognized as an independent state last month by Russia.
On Thursday, IAEA member states passed a resolution calling on Russia to cease actions against nuclear facilities in Ukraine, diplomats said.
The resolution, which was led by Canada and Poland, and supported by 26 other countries, deplored Russia’s “aggressive activity and attacks against nuclear sites in Ukraine, and seizing and taking control of nuclear facilities,” the ambassador at the UK mission in Vienna Corinne Kitsell said.
Only Russia and China voted against the resolution, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
On Wednesday, Russia notified the IAEA that its forces had taken control of the territory around the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to a letter posted the IAEA website.
The Russian letter to the IAEA said personnel at the plant continued their “work on providing nuclear safety and monitoring radiation in normal mode of operation. The radiation levels remain normal.”
On the first day of the invasion, Russian forces seized control of the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, according to Ukrainian officials.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is about 325 miles (520 kilometers) southeast of Chernobyl, where a nuclear power plant reactor exploded when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union in 1986 — sparking a disaster that affected, directly or indirectly, 9 million people, due to radioactive materials released into the atmosphere.
Ukraine has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that staff who have been kept at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) since Russian military forces took control of the site a week ago were facing “psychological pressure and moral exhaustion,” according to a statement from IAEA on Thursday.
In a joint appeal to the international nuclear watchdog, the Ukrainian government, regulatory authority and national operator said staff at the facility must be allowed to rest and rotate so that their crucial work can be carried out safely and securely.
